Massively confused on how to use this theme's dark mode

[ddejohn]

I'd like to use Github Pages as my host, but it's not clear from this documentation, Github Page's docs, nor Jekyll's how to go about actually doing this. Most of what little info I can find is years old at this point. Is this project even still active? What does the readme's blurb about minima working with the new-theme scaffold mean? I tried googling jekyll new-theme but wasn't able to find any proper documentation for it, and whether I need to use it in order to add the dark mode of this theme to my site.

Right now, I have a prototype site set up through Jekyll's installation guide and in my _config.yml I've tried adding

minima:
    skin: dark

But when I jekyll serve I still only see the light version of the site. I've tried clearing cache but that did nothing.

Can I use the dark version of minima with Github Pages? If so, how? Do I even need to mess with Jekyll directly at all? Every example of using minima as a remote-theme I've seen says nothing about how to use the dark mode of the theme. Can I just add the above to a Github Pages' _config.yml?

I just don't know where to look and for what. Any help would be massively appreciated.

[ashmaroli]

@ddejohn Please provide us with a link to your site and a link to the source repository if it is public..

[ddejohn]

Site: https://ddejohn.github.io/
Source: https://github.com/ddejohn/ddejohn.github.io/

I've also attempted to override index.html via a _layouts directory, but that doesn't seem to work either.

[ashmaroli]

Minima's dark skin is an unreleased feature. It is available only via this repository.
For that, you may use the jekyll-remote-theme plugin.

• Add the plugin to your Gemfile
• Update settings in your config file: (Note: do not copy the + / - at the start of the changed lines)

  - theme: minima
  + remote_theme: jekyll/minima@3cdd14d
  
  plugins:
    - jekyll-feed
  + - jekyll-remote-theme

[ddejohn]

I'd also love some guidance on this issue I mentioned previously:

I've also attempted to override index.html via a _layouts directory, but that doesn't seem to work either.

[ddejohn]

Some new issues:

There's a thick grey line at the top of the site, and my social links and other footer stuff is gone and has been replaced by an RSS "subscribe" button.

[ashmaroli]

@ddejohn The master branch of the repository (which contains all the unreleased new stuff) is not backwards-compatible with released versions. Technically, that is called a breaking-change and if the changes were to be released, it would be with a major version bump. That means, the next release would be a v3.0.0 instead of v2.6.0 and one should not expect a drop-in replacement.

Technicalities aside, the fact is that your site is now using the unreleased version of the theme. I strongly recommend that you read through the README document in the master branch, make a decision to either stick with the unreleased version or move back to the released version and make changes to your site accordingly.

[ddejohn]

I have read through the README. That's where all this confusion is coming from. I have also been following Jekyll's instructions on overriding themes. There seems to be a lot of conflicting information.

[ashmaroli]

@ddejohn What exactly were the conflicting information?